Browsing “Vancouver Was Awesome Series”

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.

The 1950s was a decade of moral panics. In this case it was over children being exposed to horror comic books. The Jaycee Youth Leadership collected 8000 comics and organized a book burning on Prior Street. The authors of Vancouver Noir write that “no significant improvement in juvenile behaviour was observed” following the event.

Source: Vancouver Herald, via Vancouver Noir: 1930-1960 by Diane Purvey & John Belshaw (Anvil Press, 2011)

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.

A century ago this week, Vancouver was in the midst of a Free Speech Fight after city council passed a bylaw banning the outdoor meetings of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Similar Free Speech Fights occurred in Victoria, Toronto, Missoula, Patterson, and other locales, as well as a previous attempt in 1909 to silence Vancouver’s IWW soap-box orators. 

Pioneering tactics that would later be adopted by the Civil Rights Movement, the IWW put out a call for its members elsewhere to come to town and help fill the jails until local resources needed to enforce the ban were overwhelmed. The authorities did their best to close off the border and monitored traffic on the Interurban trains to prevent agitators from flooding into Vancouver. Nevertheless, thousands came out to a meeting at the Powell Street Grounds (Oppenheimer Park) to listen to speeches and to challenge the new anti-free speech bylaw on 28 January 1912. According to historian Mark Leier,

The deputy chief signalled to a waiting line of policemen. Mounted and foot patrolmen waded into the crowd, swinging clubs and horsewhips. The reporter for the Province newspaper noted that “those not fortunate enough to get out of the way went down like ten-pins before irresistible onslaught of the officers…The Powell Street Grounds looked something like a battlefield.” Nearly thirty people were arrested, and bail was set at five hundred dollars a piece.

Other meetings followed, and police harassment and arrests of “vagrants” skyrocketed. Eventually moderate union leaders negotiated a truce that allowed for free speech in parks but not on street corners. The more militant IWW wasn’t happy with the agreement, but many of its members had already moved on to the larger and bloodier Free Speech Fight that was shaping up in San Diego. 

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.

Former lacrosse champion Lige Scurry opened a social club for black people on East Hastings on the site that would later be home to the Smilin’ Buddha Cabaret. He called it the Railway Porters’ Club because that was one of the few occupations open to black men in Vancouver and porters could rent rooms there if they were from out of town or new arrivals. Black women also frequented the club, including those working in the sex trade. The club was nicely done up, according to the Province newspaper, and “its dozen or more handsomely-fitted rooms include billiard and card parlors, and a bar sumptuously furnished.”

It wasn’t long before police raided the club, claiming it was a front for prostitution. Whether it was or not, police failed to produce any evidence and those arrested in the raid were released except for Lige Scurry. At his trial, Scurry’s lawyer argued that it was nothing more than a social club:

The women went to Scurry’s premises merely for the innocent purpose of getting their meals in a house that was open to colored people and to colored people only … All classes of people in Vancouver had their various resorts. For the well-to-do there were the better class clubs. For those who liked that sort of thing there were various tea rooms, and for those who were inclined that way there were the Y.M.C.A. and the Y.W.C.A.

In light of the lack of evidence, the judge ignored the claim that the Railway Porters’ Club operated as a brothel. Instead, he convicted Scurry of selling liquor without a licence and sentenced him to three months hard labour and a $50 fine.

Source: Vancouver Daily Province, Friday 9 December 1904, via Past Tense Vancouver

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.

Reid Fleming has been a classic in the comic book world since it debuted in the Georgia Straight in 1978. Here he is wreaking havoc on some Vancouver landmarks in the mid-’80s. The bottom photos show Fleming’s real world doppelganger.

David Boswell created the badass Fleming character before moving to Vancouver, but was frequently asked if he was inspired by a guy who worked at the Only Seafood Cafe on Hastings Street. On his website Boswell tells us that

I was intrigued by the frequency of this query, and one day in September 1983, quite by chance, found myself very near The Only. Camera in hand (as ever), I approached the restaurant and was amazed when, at that exact moment, the man himself—it had to have been he—emerged woozily and paused to light a cigarette. His movements suggested the recent intake of several refreshing libations.

Quickly and surreptitiously, I took two photographs, the second of which was shot blind. (That is to say, the camera was aimed without looking through the finder.) And they weren’t too bad! The guy reallydid resemble Reid Fleming!

You can read/watch the first Reid Fleming comic book on youtube.

Source: ReidFleming.com

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.

BC Bud beer was launched in 1931 by Coast Breweries Limited, a consortium based in Vancouver. In 1933, the company bought controlling interest in the San Francisco brewery that introduced Lucky Lager, which was later taken over by Labatt’s and remains a popular economy beer in BC and down the Pacific coast.

Source: Vancouver Sun, Thursday 27 August 1931

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.

Hawks Avenue at East Georgia Street in the 1960s.

For most of its existence, Strathcona has been densely populated with structures like this. What’s now considered necessary and eco-friendly urban density was then deemed by planners as an overcrowded slum district in need of urban renewal.

Source: When An Old House Whispers